Existentialism

“From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.” ~~MICHEL FOUCAULT

Mercury conjunct Jupiter, in Scorpio- look what it has made us do? Share pain and grief collectively. PURGE!!! Look at the death and rape culture around you. It is a cult of war and violence, a civilisation brought up on deception, dishonesty, violence, misogyny and apathy. Look at the almost Pavlovian mind control the ruling elites have rooted in our society. Look how conditioned we have become. So desensitised. Our behaviours so self-destructive. Where is all this leading?

The NM in Libra was…mmm…well, not like your conventional Libra energy. It felt dark, deep and a lingering anxiety remains. After the Mercury conjunct the Moon in Scorpio, the next day, I began to finally get a grip over the energy.

The #metoo campaign with its sordid narratives rocked my world. Scenes and shots came back from my past. Fragmented, disjointed memories of pain, hurt and suffocation.

Those hands on me, those disgusting crawling hands all over my body…the memories drove me nuts. Sounds and smells came rushing in while I read stories of rape and abuse from women all over the world. It reminded me of all the times that men have violated my boundaries and it is a large number. Be it in asking me to smile or calling me bossy or calling me a slut because I will not sleep with them, men have used and abused their positions numerous times. But we women are always expected to take everything with a pinch of salt.

I come from a country where there is a particular brand of cinema called Bollywood that has a specialised synchronised dance track which is called ITEM NUMBER, as a beautiful woman in scanty clothes, her dance troop of a bevy of girls(half naked too) behind her perform a sensual dance moving seductively to a male audience that is hooting and cat calling. She is the item. So we sorta know how to take misogyny to levels most people cannot even envisage.

You know, I have been called so many names including Manhater, Feminazi, Female Supremacist, witch, bitch, whore, slut…blah, blah…but nothing matters. I work from my heart and I do not hate. Yes I speak up against injustice, yes, I seek a revolution or an evolution…but not with hatred. Men I do not hate you. Men…I love you!

But maybe it is time to DECONSTRUCT YOUR METACOGNITION/COGNITION and POST COGNITIVE PROCESSES. Maybe it is time to think about how you think. This might actually make you a more effective thinker. But at the same time, it is also time to FEEL. Think about how you feel and why you feel so. Do you even allow yourself the luxury of feeling? Because I know how society ridicules you every-time you show emotions. Be a man and what not. But feeling my love are not a luxury, let me tell you, they are a necessity for healthy functionality in life.

I know some of you hate me. Think long and hard. Why do you hate me? Why? Because I speak the truth? Because I can see the toxic patterns of patriarchy? Because I think and feel and actually speak up, unlike so many of my sisters? It hurts the most when women misunderstand. Because it is high time we women stop enabling patriarchy.

And men…what when tomorrow you have a girl? What then? Sleep peacefully, you have WILD CRUSADERS out there and the tide will turn. Let us be that change.

You cannot label me. Every single time you start to think that you have me all figured out, I promise to surprise you. You know why you cannot label me? Because humans cannot be labelled. No matter how appropriate the label might be, the labelling by itself is redundant. I will dress the way I want to, because I do not dress for your gaze. Yes, I want you to look at me and appreciate me, but my reality does not revolve around how much you fancy me. I want you to want me, but with respect and dignity. I want you to see me for what I am…a multidimensional being of light who is having a human experience. She is a woman who is free, wild and adventurous and I like looking at life through her lens.

But I am not her…this is not some WOKE BS. This is in fact the very truth of the fabric of this reality. I am not ME, not this body, not this pussy and not this orgasm. Hahahaha! I am in constant flux, forever shifting and I already exist in the many versions in the many multiverses. But I am also here, typing this so you can read.

Absolutely overwhelming? Do not let fear engulf you. You are an astronaut of the mind, aren’t you? Or else why are you reading this?

Just because a woman wears make up and skimpy clothes does not make her a slut. Her mini skirt is not an invite for your lust. My red lipstick does not mean I am saying yes to you. Understand that. And that is what I am here to show you. Women cannot be put away in tiny little labels. So stop calling me a whore, slut, manhater or whatever the fuck your toxic mind can think of. Jupiter has deployed his archetypal lens and activated my third house of communication which happens to be Scorpio. So the intensity and the truths will come out. Look how the brave women are speaking up and toppling the status quo.

Today, the Scorpionic Moon trines Neptune and the dreamscape opens up for me and oh, I am bleeding since the NM in Libra. You know how my psychic energy swells every time I menstruate and it is usually during this time I have my most profound visions and epiphanies or aha moments. Menstrual blood is very potent for magick and can be used in multiple ways. In fact sex during this time can most certainly be magickal, for both involved. It takes on a primal oeuvre.

Back to the splintered visions. There are fragmented, chaotic dreams…dreams of the snowy Himalayas, dreams of cymbals clashing, dreams of the pale red dot of a Sun…I can smell the incense, I can hear the chanting, I can feel the vibe, it is electric with spiritual energy.

Scorpio season is all about digging up the metaphorical/metaphysical dirt and really getting down and dirty to investigate, so I will share with you an experience I had a few months ago. Let me know what you think of them.

So this monk from Tibet, Lhasa writes to me. He tells me that he has known me for many lives and in the last incarnation we worked and studies together in Tibet, in Gyanganj.

In fact, I had told him in that reality to come and find me in the 3D world through some Youtube videos I have made in 2011 or so. He told me that I have asked him to remind me of the mark in my chest. Look I have no mark on my chest, but I wanted to get a wolf tattoo done there. But for now, there is nothing.

He told me to meditate on this and get back to him. I regret not taking this whole thing seriously and in fact I did try to sit in meditation, but my baby was all over me and the cats had to be fed, so I could not really tap into any vision.

I did not respect the monk or even pay attention. I called him brother and he told me that monks are no one’s brothers. They are just monks and that I am a Nun from the snowy slopes of Tibet.

I am aware of my connection to Tibet and the signs and synchronicity that I am experiencing have increased significantly over the last few years. I know Tibet has been my home during numerous incarnations and I have meditated and studied there. The Himalayas are my home and I know this.

And then there are memories of the kalachakra initiation. Let me tell you one thing, my greatest desire in life right now is receiving the Kalachakra transmissions from the Dalai Lama. This particular Dalai Lama has been my teacher in many incarnations and it is time we meet.

There is so much spiritual telepathy between us that I am actually shocked that we have not met yet. I dream of the Dalai Lama with a strange persistence. I have never dreamt of one person so much. He is always there, in my dreams. Everything becomes silent when he smiles at me and calls me to his arms. Everything becomes silent and just the way it is meant to be.

I hope to travel across seven seas soon and go to one place which has been calling me for very many years. I can feel myself there too and I think a wild adventure awaits me. Actually this Libra NM journaling was much about that. It felt good to finally decide that I want to go there. Now let’s see if the Universe responds.

I am not going to pretend that I’m this master story teller, in fact I’m seriously beginning to question my choice of vocation as writer/ filmmaker. No HD has my film on it and the analogue era was before my time. I have made all these films, in my head. From script to post prod, I’ve created these monstrosities and they exist. Don’t know where, don’t know how, but they do. Mistakes are portals of discovery, right Joyce. Works every time, doesn’t it. But then you were seeking to be immortal, hence the elaborate subterfuge, but for me. I am the nothingness, the mistake. These films that I’ve made in my mind, over and over, lead me nowhere in the real world, for they don’t exist. Neither does she, but there she is, invading my senses, my ideas, my dreams.

I think of these bizarre stories and it’s not even that I write them, they write themselves. I’m just their victim. They laugh at me, they torment me, they wake me up at four in the morning in jest, they drive me insane tossing and turning in bed at night. They are my oppressors. Not always. There is a friendly angle to our relationship. It does exist.

To the world, I’m this depressed writer who types away for hours on end on her laptop, writing God knows what. I’m in the fraternity of paid-poorly writers who are paid next to nothing to develop content. That’s my day job, at night I’m batwoman! You wish right?

I write screenplays and then make my films over and over again. And then there are these surfeits I have to deal with, like my friends from these stories, they begin to cohabit with me. These characters, they decide to pop right out of the Final Draft document and strut their stuff in front of me. There’s a reason why I’m constipated. How do you drop the excrement off your body when someone is reciting to you, a fluke line out of Keats, or no Shelley, I think. The Romantics definitely. Or you have this beer bar dancer doing make up! She keeps wanting to know if she’s looking saxy, not sexy, but saxy.

How the fuck is someone to shit in peace? Then there’s this boxer, he’s got tuberculosis and I write about it. Bam! I develop this terrible cough and an unbearable pain in the chest. The next day, I go to clear my throat and the phlegm sitting in the basin has blood. What does the boxer do? He laughs at me.

Then there are these pregnant women. I don’t think I’ll get into that right now, but yes you guessed it right. My periods stopped coming. Who could be the father? There were three possible candidates, but no one I could discuss this with. Not like they were my live-in boyfriends. They were nothing, not even friends. I stared at the pregnancy stick, yes, two lines. It didn’t matter how many times I re-took that test, it was the same. Now I’m no fool, I use protection. So did it not work? Did the bloody condom burst? Am I… I don’t think I could bring myself to voice that word. PREGNANT!!! I was and I did what I had to.

Not only am I plagued by these people, but strangely the things I write come to pass. No don’t think of it as some kind of gift, it’s a fucking curse actually. It might have been a gift if all I wrote about was unicorns and fairies, but here I sit in silence and type away. What do I see? The desperate situation we’re in, yes us humans. I see the pain, no I think it’s more like I am in pain. I suffer day and night, sometimes with reason, sometimes without. I’m just a sucker for pain and my heart is perpetually broken. These films that I make are extensions of my tragic self and the most persistent theme of them is suicide.

You can say that I have a morbid fascination for suicide. My mother committed suicide when I was four or five, her mother too killed herself and so did her father, so yes it kind of runs in the family. I’ve been subjected to hours and hours of counselling so I don’t jump off a high-rise or hang myself with a dupatta. Morons! As if those sessions helped.

You see to me suicide is an art-form. You’ve got to be an artist to kill yourself with grace. You’ve got to see the beauty in death and embrace it. You’ve got to worship the power you have, the power to decide when it’s over. There is no fucking God, there is just you and the choice is yours.

My mother named me Shambhavi, I have an abbreviated form that I’ve chosen- SHAM! Yes I’m a sham! I’m not artist, if I was then I’d have already created the master piece- my death! The suicide, but I am not an artist, just a writer.

There are these three projects that I’m working on- developing for filmmakers who are too lazy to write their own shit and need to hire morons like me. The boxer does tend to get on my nerves, otherwise I am actually pretty involved with the rest. They tell me what to write and I do. It seems to be working. Of course there are times when these directors feel the need to impose upon my feeble intellectuality and ask me to make corrections. Temper tantrums will be thrown, but somehow we manage. We don’t exist without each other. We need each other.

Then there are these turbulent characters that take birth from my mind. They wreak havoc on my life, depressed, suicidal, maniacal, it’s difficult to deal with them. There is no sense of closure, no sense of comfort with them, only angst is the best way I could describe the feeling.

I have also tried setting MSS on fire, but once they’ve been conceived of in my head, there is no annihilating them. They are a part of my life, actually these creatures are my life whether I like it or not. The only way I can get rid of them is to finally begin work on the masterpiece.

It was so strange, when I met her that night. She stood in front and for the life in me, I couldn’t fathom her identity. There was something so familiar about her. P.S- I don’t subscribe to God or reincarnation. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alive as I did when I saw her.

Don’t ask me how I landed up there, but I’ve had such strange and absurd situations happening to me recently that I just let go and watched her. She was tiny and her hairdo reminded me some old flick on Joan of Arc. Dressed in all black, there was this pendant around her neck, a spiral in jade and it looked like a fern would spring right out of it. Waist-upwards she had this sphinx like quality, her short crop was unkempt, her bangs fell on her forehead. She blinked her eyes through thick glasses as she looked at me. It had to be me, right. There was nobody else there, just a cat.

She lumbered across the vast living room. I could see her legs did not carry her well and she was stooping. There was a fire in her eyes which I could see even through those thick glasses. She sat right in front with a cuppa tea. I was not offered any. We sat like that for I don’t know how long. I was looking to say something. “Hello, I’m Sham,” “Hello, I’m a sham.” But I said nothing.

There was something that caught my eyes- an old calendar that screamed 1922.

Okay officially I have lost it, I know it to be 2017, not 1922. That made me look around. The deco was very vintage English, complete with Victorian furniture and then there were books. Quite a collection! I could happily bury myself in there for the rest of time and not bother about those people who live in my head or even the person in front with her sparkly eyes. She was not old, maybe thirty, but she looked much older. Her body was bent out of shape and her face showed signs of physical pain. I could tell she was sick and ailing. I looked on.

That belligerent and witty tongue could lash out at me, but it remained mute. It could raise a tempest but the waters remained still.

“You know I want to be like those ballerina’s of Dega, frozen in their graceful posture…” Those were the first words that came out of her mouth.

A reply, it came quite effortlessly. Then I bit my tongue. Crap! I sound like an idiot, I thought. “But those ballerinas are frozen, there is no life in them. They’re dead, like dolls…”

She threw her head back and laughed. That sound awakened a primal part of me and the ballerinas of Dega were right in front of me, suspended in space. There was this one figure of a ballerina and right next to her was this strange woman whose face you could not see, hidden by a hat in black attire and they both seemed to be waiting. It felt like us, that moment that time. I felt like the ballerina, massaging her foot in eager anticipation to perform and she was like the chaperon, waiting for that moment when I would set the stage on fire, pushing my body for fleeting moments of grace that would captivate one and all. I do that every day. I push my mind so I could come up with that work of art that would have entire generations enthralled, now you see what a SHAM I AM.

She wanted to be like those ballerinas. Why? Did she not feel their pain, their exhaustion? Did she want to be frozen in time?

“I never leave the house anymore and don’t like having servants,” She told me.

“T.B is painful and in 1920 it is incurable and you also have gonorrhoea, you must be in severe pain, most of the time.” I replied.

“You speak as if you come from some other world.” You can tell the gutsy woman she is.

“I come from the future…” I burst out laughing as I said it. “It sounded like some corny Sci-fi that no one would go to watch.

“You mean the motion picture…” She sounded interested, but then who is not interested in film.

“It’s very interesting that you would bring up the motion picture, because I have this story that I’m working on and the protagonist makes motion pictures, but from a feminine perspective, you know…”

I knew. “You want to explore the feminine angle? You seem content telling us stories through the male POV, Point of view…” I had to explain as she had no idea. Feminism, not one of her strong points.

But then what do you expect from her in 1910? Seems a bit bizarre, absurd if you ask me. I reach out in my pocket to stroke my I phone 6. The screen is cracked, just like my life.

You do not abandon your husband in 1920, you’re a woman and your place is right by his side. There are no other options, do not seek them. She seemed to know about real people, not some theoretical characters, but people of flesh and blood. That captivated me for years. How does a woman of her class and upbringing understand the human condition that well?

How does a marriage last only a day? There are no answers to such theoretical questions? Are writers really so crazy to get married to see what it feels like? Is this research? What is a marriage anyway? There was so much to talk about, but we sat silent.

CHAPTER 2

MANSFIELD’S POV

The tuberculosis has drained all my energy, the pelvic pain is getting worse, but my dream portrayal must continue, if anything today there is a seeing that I have felt. It’s not writing, it’s seeing. There are moments when I see all black before my eyes, need to sit down and gather myself, but the imaginative process never stops, it’s akin to breathing.

Much of my work remains unpublished and there are days when I lovingly gaze at them as a sign of acknowledgement and appreciation. Writing or rather seeing is a need and it must be done. In fact this sabbatical from my amorous lifestyle has given me time to write and I am thankful for it for all my stories come from the depths of my being.

Bliss and other Stories has just been published this year and it seems to be doing rather well. But there is suddenly a story inside me. I don’t even know what it is, suddenly I see Maata’s face and her breasts like a motion picture, a silent film and once again I’m back in the Hippodrome and I see the audience. Predictable! Their hands, their heads, their expressions.

I dreamt a story last night, every little detail etched in my mind, down to the smells and sounds and I was a part of it.

I see her eyes. A dark melancholia! An intense hankering for experience in the world of echoes and shadows. Who is she? She could be my alter ego. Her olive skin glows like logs burning at the fireplace, her long, dark hair is threaded like the negroes. Her mind is where she lives, the outside world has no fixity for her. I remember gazing at the audience, why not, I was a part of them. In this story I’m a part of both- I am her and I am the audience.

This story about her, this absurd protagonist who writes these films. Could it be that she makes them? Lumbering away with that heavy contraption of a camera? Who knows in the future there just maybe such women? I’d have loved to discover that platform.

Story-tellers tell stories, it doesn’t matter what the medium is. I have been told my writing is descriptive, just like the way they do it in the studios in America. I could have gone there, but travel for me is not a possibility. It’s why I cannot even go home- New Zealand!! Oh my pain and pleasure.

I’ve been criticized, compared to Chekov, snubbed for my hankering to be free, my will, my feisty nature, but people forget I’m just human. Where is the time? I’ve lost so much, I’ve gained so much. I have cried, I have laughed, I have lived and now I will die.

But this story, it wants to be written. Murray will surely publish most of my work even though I’ve told him not to. It sells, my writing and so shall its fate be, it’ll be sold! I need to sit down on days when the pain is bearable and write. I want to give my readers hope, yes everything is twisted, but there is hope. I was tired of reading every single thing out there from the perspective of a man, I mean how long is society going to ignore us? The fact that the women in my stories have decided to speak up shows me there is hope for us. Our voices need to be heard.

The Fourth way may just be my way, reading Gurdjeiff is a complicated process, yes it has opened up new portals to my experiencing life, but then there is so much left to be discovered and do I have time? Regret, don’t we all have a pinch of that with every sip of life we take. I for one, am swamped with regret. I regret my childhood, I regret the taunts and mocking because of my rather hilarious glasses, I regret not writing more often, I regret not supporting the women’s suffragette in the U.K, I regret not being vocal about it, I regret not telling Maata how much I loved her, I regret my obsession with Chekov. No I take that back, no regrets there. I regret my brother dying like that. I can still see him in uniform, bloody and dusty.

Although I have been quoted as saying that I do not regret anything. I have asked my readers to never regret, but that is only the half truth. Yes regret is an appalling waste of energy and nothing can be built on it, but it exists. I wish I could just erase it away. REGRET ERASED!

The Work must be done, it’s 1922 and here I am in colonial India, Calcutta to be precise, all alone. A sick white woman in the midst of all these natives.

Then I saw her, she was vibrant, her olive skin was smooth as it tasted the Sunlight which played on it and created so many hues that I just watched. I don’t know how she arrived right in front of me, definitely not dressed like the ordinary native girls or like an English lady. She had on trousers like men, I think they’re called denims. The road workers in America wear them as overhauls. I never expected a woman to dress in them and then her long, dark negro like hair. I thought she was a figment of my imagination, the medicines playing a trick on me. After all I was a sick woman. I waited for the apparition to disappear. But she sat there and just stared back. I think we briefly spoke, about Dega’s ballerina’s, but it made no sense.

Theosophy and Gurdjeiff! You know the three types of men or women found in this world- those that are centred in their physical bodies, then the ones centred in their emotional space and those that focus on their minds. What type am I? I have never been able to quantify myself in any one category, I’m indeed a mixture of all three. I have lived centred in the physical, more than not I have existed only in my emotions and then of course my mind is one of my favourite places to visit and spend some time. So yes, I’m a bit of all. All writers are as we have all these stories inside us where we become those people when we write them.

I remember alluding to this story of this woman who makes motion pictures, these dreamy silent films. I think she is my protagonist.

Right now, all I can think of is Van Gogh’s painting- the self portrait. I consider myself a writer/painter. I paint too like Van Gogh, I paint with words.

I just wish I had more time. I want to be healthy again, to experience a full, living-breathing life. I want to be with the Earth and see all the wondrous things- the sea and its infinite waves, the mellow Sunrise of a perfect morn.

I know I exist in this state of hypnotic waking sleep. I want to wake up and I’m willing to see if the Method will help. This story needs to be written. I need to find her again. That woman, no she’s more like a girl. I need to find her.

And then I see it, the Insect scuttles away and there are these strange voices that I can hear. Sounds like some Hindu chants. What is it?

Is my illness getting the better of me? I see myself, is it me or some other woman, no wait it’s her, dressed as Van Gogh, holding a gun to her face. She pulls the trigger!

I see a thick manuscript by the coffee table and note that’s its rather gloomy this afternoon, the wind shakes the trees so. Flashes trouble me- I think I see Lawrence. Murray tells me that THE LOST GIRL is modelled on me. I know, I know that my writing and me in person have had a significant influence on him, and he’s drawn parallels between me and some of his noteworthy characters, but why do I see him, in Colonial India?

My neighbour from Cornwall, my friend, the eminent D.H. LAWRENCE. I am his Albina and we both struggle everyday for our independence and outcasts we’ve become. We shared a number of things in common, I was a colonial outsider; he was from a working-class mining town. I am more like Lawrence than anybody. We are unthinkably alike, in fact. Four of us did form a peculiar brief and uneasy friendship in bleak Cornwall, yet, I treasure those days.

And now I find this letter from Murray. It does nothing for my mood right now, but leafing through it seems to be my only option. So I do it.

“You are all about me – I seem to breathe you, hear you, feel you in me and of me.” I actually wrote those lines for him and felt like I was home in his tent, sitting at his table. It seems far away, back here dreaming of silent films and Virginia Woolf.

There were times when I wanted to strangle my beloved Murray. I go back in my mind to one such incident. It left a sour taste in my mouth. I was cruel, we were verbally bashing one another, oblivious of who was present. I’d like to think it was tragedy that kept us together.

There’s nothing I want more than a cigarette. The curls of smoke rise up to meet their oblivion as I take a pull. It calms my frayed nerves and I take a sip of the tea. Darjeeling tea from the foothills of the Himalayas, a colonial addiction. Tea snobbery!

As I relax, she appears in front of me. Seated in a cluttered desk, she seemed to be looking at something. It looked like a boo, but a light emanated from it. She seemed to be typing like it was some sort of type writer. I couldn’t see properly, the smoke and mist clouded my vision.

I feel so divorced from reality that everything seems to be from a film, some experimental film, where the maker is purposely using disjointed close ups, to display the brokenness of the characters, to make visible the dehumanising of them.

It’s like when I look at advertisements- dismembered body parts of women are made to mimic products, a torso becomes a bottle of alcohol, and two legs become scissors. The woman is not only sexualized, objectified, but her body is not even allowed to remain whole, it is sliced up. What violence!

But here in this scene the filmmaker has perceived of slicing the characters to convey to me that they are somehow not whole, they are somehow disintegrating, they are fading away. The film I see, has a burnt out texture, the whole shot seems to be fragmented; there is an emptiness evident in the mise scene; the atoms are 9.999999999999% empty, so reality is essentially emptiness and I am more not here than here.

The camera is fluid, the shots keep going out of focus and then the subject gets refocused on. Wait, is this some film festival? Nah, it’s my life, more like a snapshot of my life.

That day!

I see her face; her mascara is running down her face, she looks like some character from a horror flick. Dressed in torn jeans and a white tee, her feet bare, her messy make up, the alcohol on her breath and her cigarette smoke, they all surface at different times in my mind, like abstract close ups. They help me conjure up that very moment and I am there again.

A few weeks ago we had gone to the Police Station to file an FIR against this bastard. Not much was said that day or the following weeks of what had transpired because my sister was pretty much catatonic and has been since them, but this evening I get a call from her, drunk out of her head asking me to drop by. I ask Frank not to come as she might open up easier without a male presence, so hopping into a rick, I went straight to her Andheri apartment that she shared with Mel.

Anxiously I waited for her to get the door, and the sight that greeted my eyes shocked the living hell out of me.

Zeenia is wearing the same clothes in which she was raped and has painted her face very dramatically, presumably depicting the way she feels. I’m fucking scared. All these past few weeks what seemed like an eternity to me, she had suffered terribly from rape trauma syndrome and it has devastated us. We have all pretty much given up smiling or talking about anything normal, we just eat when hunger threatens to burn a hole through our stomach. Between Mel and me, we supervise her day and night, never allowing that one moment of weakness to overcome her. Slowly, slowly, she began to sleep for a few minutes, which has become a few hours. She’s stopped screaming in her sleep and the hallucinations about the rape have also lessened.

Only on days when we went to court, she’d be pretty much devastated to see the perpetrator sitting across the room, all smug and confident; lying through his teeth. Today the session at court was traumatic and this night is the reaction to that.

The night begins…

There are red Sula bottles strewn round the floor. I’m in Zeenia’s apartment at Yari Road, at least that’s where I think I am, my senses and understanding have abandoned me; we’re smoking spliffs and cigarettes like it’s going out of fashion.

The tiny apartment is smoky, it reeks of that cheap, sweet Sula smell that I detest; never been much of a drinker, in fact I do not care for alcohol at all, but today’s different.

Zeenia is drunk with a capital D and she keeps thrusting the bottle in my hand while petting Bhola, a stray puppy she rescued from the alleys of four bunglows. I keep sipping, knowing that she has something to say, but it is one of those things which can be mouthed out when one is sufficiently inebriated.

So I keep quiet, I drink on; we’re getting sloshed, Zeenia appears to be crying, hugging Bhola who stares at her surprised.

I see her face, a close up shot, her smeared mascara, and her face pale. What’s happened to you, my dearest friend, my sister? Why’re you wearing the same clothes? Why would you wear such ghoulish makeup?

Zeenia breaks down, she’s sobbing her eyes out. Bhola drags himself and sniffs her; he cannot walk as his hind is paralyzed, he carries his whole body weight on his front paws. There is a cello playing in the background, “Nothing else matters”, the celebrated Mettalica tune plays; there are no words, just the haunting tune spoken by the cello. It is spooky, it is surreal; eerily it plays on, the cello is hell bend on making me nauseous.

This nausea is different; it is filled with anxiety, with trepidation, with a doomsday feeling. Something bad is happening, no, no, it has happened and she is trying to tell me about it.

Birds fly high,

Heart as heavy as sinking iron.

The dusky twilight of today.

My haiku for the day, as I wait for her.

She is trying to work up the courage to speak about it, yes, something horrific has happened and she’s kept it bottled up for so long. Life as we knew it has ended, even Bhola can sense it.

Zeenia is on all-fours, on the floor, pulling her hair, screaming out in pain; all this while she was holding it in. I want to comfort her, but nausea is all I have. Where is Dadu? Where am I? Obviously not here, this body is here, pissed out of her mind, but where am I?

Am I in her scream? Am I in her pain? Am I even there? Do I even exist?

I just want to type away all this pain, yes, that’s what writers do, don’t they? A fucking fucked up cliché.

He raped me Nina, she’s saying. For the first time, I hear the words, the sinking feeling gets worse, as if it could get any worse. Since that day at the police station, she’d remained mute and unresponsive to everything, but today the flood gates have broken. I think I handled it better when she was silent, seeing her like this, with such a painful rawness is actually very scary.

Chills ran down my spine to actually hear these words- RAPE, RAPE, RAPE, it kept making a din in my consciousness. No, I did not hear it, but why is this word making so much noise, drowning everything else.

You read about rape in the newspapers, you watch it on tele, you see actors getting raped in films, you come across it in novels or short stories; but where do you encounter that word in the comfort of your own surroundings?

Such words do not perpetrate their violence in my mind when it comes to my sister.

As a writer you explore rape through different characters, you feel it deeply, but not like this.

Focus Nina, I hear a voice in my brain. Focus on what she is saying. “That bastard, he’s a fucking doctor, I trusted him…” All these words came to my ears disjointed, like a fragment from a whole dialogue but in the time they travelled to my ears these sound waves had lost most of their substance.

“How do people in positions of power abuse others so badly, I fucking don’t understand, especially women; these cunts create feminazis” shouts Zeenia. Her hands trembles as she tries to cut some white powder into straight lines. She snorts it through a crisp note, her eyes begin to water. She offers me the note; rolled up, ready to aid me in devouring some white powder.

No fucking way man, I did not yet care to fry my brain this instant, and of course the nausea is threatening to take charge. I have to keep it down. How did she get this stuff?

“Tell me all about it Zeenu, forget about the crap his lawyers are throwing at you, just tell me everything, from the beginning; he was about to operate on you, what happened?” I hear a small voice ask.

“Doctors are cunts; they probably rape patients on an everyday basis, who knows? Oh! And so are lawyers, fucking fuckballs…” she vacillates as if in a trance.

“But how, how,” I hear an insipid murmur. “How did it happen?”

“Fuck Nina, you’re just regurgitating the same shit over and over again, I was thinking about the story you wrote remember, about the rape…in the stables,” she reminds me.

I am quietened, I have no words. Yes I am dying to know how it happened, but I must not seem insensitive, as if at this point I can even feel anything. I think I officially know the meaning of hollow inside. I am guilty of writing that rape story in the stables, I am guilty, guilty…just hang me!

Once reminded of my creation of pain, I keep quiet; I know I have to pacify her, to give her some warmth. Why the fuck did I write that story? Oh Dadu, where are you now?

My mind is such a mess that right now even if Dadu appeared and spoke to me I could only materialize a vacuous stare.

Pull yourself together, that voice inside my head would just not shut up.

The scene playing in my mind, this movie I’m watching is boody nerve wracking. I want to shake this character Nina, the idiotic poet, phoo. What on Earth is her problem? Why can’t the bitch just hug her sister?

It’s as if the character in the film heard my cue. I see this Nina person slowly go up to her sister. She hugs her, it’s not a hug; it’s more of surrender. Zeenia had not expected this move, her rigid body turns limp, she surrenders to the power of human touch. The two sisters sob in each other’s arms, it’s perfect. The observer and the observed became one, for a second, I became Nina.

Nina, the writer; no big deal in a country where Chetan Bhagat is a best seller, it’s absolutely mundane now, being a writer that is. It’s officially the death of the intellectual. Besides what does this girl really write? Most would label her work as b.s, too grim, too existential (as if that’s a profanity), basically useless! Entertainment kahan gaya paaji? Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Yes I am a morose writer, a fucking retard, oh, and depressed retard!

Scream of infinite solitude,

Enmeshed in traffic of the soul,

A faint smile.

This kind of shit is running through my head, fuckity fuck!

The night drags on. It’s funny how when I have a pleasurable time, it’s gone before I can even quantify all the sensations I had felt; but when things go downhill, it’s like karma coming full-force to bite me in the ass.

Finally, we both stop sobbing!

Her voice is small, it’s in fact tiny!

I can barely hear it, although we’re so close.

“You know how fucked up this shit is, I went to consult him for that boob job, my producer finally gave me the cash…so I found him online and went ahead, those D cups were all I had in my head, I’m so fucked up, don’t shshhh me, I’m a dumb bitch. You told me not to go for it, but what was I to do. I needed bigger tits, for that fucking part. Fuck, shit’s really hit the roof. I’m fucked, fucked…” She says.

I have no response, my eyes are closed. I am not watching her face, just imagining her reactions.

I could see every single micro expression, every single movement of her jaws, of her eyes, how the lines creased in her face, I saw all the details without actually looking.

I taste Zeenia’s tears in my mouth or were they my own? I have no answers, I have just feelings. The nausea, the confusion is overwhelming and the emotions are transmigrating as words in my mind palace. I wish to document the pain of the dark night, there was an abundant amount of it and my psyche could not hold all.

I wait with bated breath for her to continue and it looks like Bhola did the same.

Her voice has a far off quality to it, like it echoes from some distant world. I listen as she continues.

“Don’t they have the bloody Hippocratic oath, practise medicine honestly, screw practising medicine, isn’t it absolutely unethical on so many grounds to sodomize your patient,” as she says this I realize she has stopped sobbing, so have I.

My eyes are still closed, I’m watching this scene as the abstract, fragmented film, all those extreme close ups to help the exposition along.

She moves away slowly, I just wait. Our embrace is broken, now we sit facing each other. I open my eyes, I see her eyes.

The pain in them is excruciating, it rips my heart apart. Looking into her eyes I know that no matter how hard I try I will never be able to pen down that emotion, that look will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Zeenia’s my baby sister, I came to the world five seconds earlier, so I’m the older sister; in any case I’ve acted like she was my choto bon.

Shey amar choto bon, boro adorer choto bon…yes, I would piss her off to no end when this song came out of my lips. Damn you Nina, cut out the didi complex, what’s with Bongs and didigiri?

And kobigiri? Kobi kobi bhab, chonder obhak. True that. What’s with all the poetry in my heart, it’d be better off being more prosaic, that’s what the world needs.

Anyway, I protected her, I supported her, I guided her; overall I performed all functions of an older sister as well as that of my mother. Dadu was always there, he was our guardian angel.

Sanity is returning slowly to me, I guess it’s the warmth from my sister’s hug. I’m inclined to ramble on, “Your tits are fine, and why did you even need to go to that asshole? I told you not to, you don’t need silicon in your tits to become an actor. You’re not a bimbo, you’re way better than that.”

“Nah re baba, how can it be your fault and no I’m not thinking of a fucking haiku?? Nah re shona, it is my fault. I should have insisted and when you didn’t listen I should have done something severe.”

“What severe? Tied me up?” Her voice takes on a lighter note.

“Probably, fuck knows.” A hint of a smile in my voice.

“I have made Dadu proud, gone and got myself raped.” She laughs cynically. Bhola gets excited to hear her laugh and barks loudly wagging his tail, she grabs him roughly and begins kissing him. What violent love!

“Dadu would have never judged you know that, although your desire for the film led to all this…” I murmur.

A slap is what I deserve; blurting this out was definitely not the right move.

“Desire is the root of all suffering he would say,” she smiles.

I think this night will never end and I don’t know when we passed out on the floor listening to Bob Marley- No woman no cry.

The mind is a funny mechanism, it does not remember everything, yet everything is tucked away neatly in some kind of mind palace. We remember things selectively, otherwise we’d go stark raving mad!

The scene begins to fade away, like a slow fade out. And I remember typing lines on to my laptop…

The smell of death, the touch of suffering,

The hungry mouths, the tired bodies,

This is reality, wait, its buffering.

This is what it embodies.

The sleep, the dream, the dream in the dream!

The lines disappear…

Another more menacing scene replaces this one. It has an ominous overture; the sound of water fills my ears.

You know the sound of water running in a shower.

Zeenia is inside and she is scrubbing herself furiously. We’ve lost the court case, after months of painful hours spent in court, the verdict is out. Dr. V is officially not guilty. It’s somehow proven that my sister’s the slut, apparently they had consensual sex. So the case is blown to dust, like a lamp extinguished with a puff.

That night will be embedded in my psyche forever. We’ve returned home after another god-awful day at court, and today was the last day. We have lost in the Mumbai high court. We may decide to challenge the verdict in Supreme Court, but that’s something we’ve got to decide together. For tonight, it is just silence I seek.

Melissa is Zeenia’s partner, they seem to be in love. I quite like her, the girl seems to have her head on her shoulders.

We were talking softly about nothing exceptional, in fact I did not even want to talk, but had to, Mel needed to talk and I was there.

So we spoke, sipping coffee and taking turns to pet Bhola.

I had insisted that Zeenia leave her bathroom door open, she had one too many episodes recently. The breakdown of her psyche bit by bit was becoming more evident and today in court I saw the look in her eyes- the look of defeat. It broke my heart.

I heard the water run in the shower and the words to her favourite song floated out. We kept on talking, the water kept running, the beats marched on. It was as if time was set in a loop. I registered nothing from the conversation with Melissa, I’m sure she didn’t either; we were both trying to keep from breaking down.

Then she politely asked us to leave her alone and went for a bath which seemed like ages. We also wrapped up and I went to see her to kiss her goodnight. Yes she was in bed, smelling wonderful, hugging Bhola. Kissing her I left, Mel went into the shower, finished up and crawled into bed.

That night I saw baba and ma in a dream, it was prophetic. I ran after being woken up by my dream and the thoughts that followed. I went into her room.

The air had turned chilly, if that was even possible in a city like Bombay; and I miss you like the deserts miss the rain, said the song.

We ran. I saw this happening in slow motion. My life in film- we ran to the bed, and what I had expected greeted my eyes.

She lay on the bed, all snugly hugging her Bhola who was not making any noise.

Mel shrieked Frank ran in; I don’t know what happened after that. Some sort of primeval hardwiring in my brain took care of things.

Zeenia’s mouth was wiped dry, she had to be changed into jeans and a sweatshirt; after cleaning her up, her clothes sat snugly on her body as we put her down in the couch.

I remember seeing her face, all the troubles had vanished, and she seemed to be in deep sleep. I remember Dadu singing “Amaro shone chandero kona, bhubone tulona nai re…”

He sang this song sometimes; it was apparently our mother’s favourite, her mother would sing it to her when she was a child.

Where is she? I barely remember her now, but she’s there somewhere in my psyche; sometimes I hear her sing, her smell, her touch, for a micro second I remember.

Today she had come to see me, in my dream. She had told me something which made absolutely sense- you are her, she is you…

The reality was beginning to fragment again, my head was spinning and I could hardly focus as parts of my dream danced around my mind.

I imagined her last moments; she kept her pills hidden somewhere, maybe in the cistern. I see her take out a fistful, while her tears and water all get mixed up, you’d know she’s crying if only you watched the agony on her face.

She stuffs the pills in her mouth, chokes on them but swallows them down. Reflex action, she feels like throwing up. But she clutches her mouth, forcing them down.

I cut back in my mind to another scene, we’re sitting in the bathroom floor, she’s fallen flat on her face, she’s hurt, purple blue bruises adorn her face.

“Please Zeenu, stop taking this shit. Are you trying to leave me alone, do you want to kill yourself?” I tell her.

Suddenly a smile breaks free from all this torment; she whispers softly, her voice like silk.

“Nina to be something I am not is also a form of suicide, listen I want to hand in my resignation from this fucked up life, before I get fired.”

I hear her laugh softly as if this idea had amused her.

“Quite the philosopher, to be or not to be,” I say.

“Has always been the question,” she says definitively.

“Don’t do anything stupid ok, remember what Dadu would say, all this shit is unreal.” She sensed the urgency; the request in my voice touched her somewhere I know.

She looked at me long and hard, “I’m the fucking poster girl for stupid at this moment,” She thinks, probably about Dadu as her face softens. “I doubt Dadu would quite put it like that, but I get the gist.”

We sit in silence on the cold, wet tiles, we embraced our tears instead of suppressing them and calm washed over us.

“Some fucked up illusion this is…why can’t something good happen to me for a change? She blurts out; I feel her heartache. “At least your Muffin has nine lives right, can’t he give me a couple?”

I smile. Do cats have nine lives?

Mel is touching my hands, she is trying to bring me back to the present moment. I cut back to the scene in front- my sister’s body is stone cold, she finally did the “stupid” thing.

Was it so stupid after all? My grandmother also handed her resignation and so had her father; after all we share the same mitochondrial DNA.

Somehow this incident had made Zeenia hate herself, it made her hopeless; I did not understand what could make her as full of despair as to end her life, not just hers, but end our lives.

After Dadu’s passing, she is, I mean was all I had. I’m still not used to referring to her in the past.

I can still feel her vibrations; our feelings exist as vibration along the nervous system and we feel what another feels. I feel my sister.

I hear the sound of an approaching ambulance; she will be taken away soon. Bhola is whining, his tail stiff and he just keeps licking Zeenu’s hands.

Mel was ready when they walked in, thankfully she sorted everything out. She tugged at my hands and nodded, signalling it was time to move.

I got up zombified, it was time.

The journey to the hospital is hazy, a blur in my mind.

I remember her body being carried in a stretcher, with tubes all over her nostrils and face.

What the hell were they doing to her?

It looked to me like some scene from a D-grade horror; hospitals sicken me to the core. It’s a bloody phobia-

Nosocomephobia!

I had this phobia all along which is why I had googled it; it was at least a comfort to know I am not alone.

They say that the fear essentially arises from the fact that one has no control over their lives once admitted.

A control freak, I’m not! It didn’t take me long to realize that nothing is under control and in fact nothing can ever be.

All I can recollect is sitting on a steel bench in the corridor; it’s flooded with lights, the walls are white, and everything smells disgusting! The Doctors in their garbs, mouths covered, the nurses in their uniforms, hair tied severely in a bun, they all looked scary and ugly; all the action was happening in slow motion and it looked like they were experimenting on humans. Maybe they’re aliens, who even knows?

Something about the smell in a hospital, a mix of Dettol, bleach, blood, sweat, puke and faeces; you can also smell the fear, the anxiety, the devastation disease and bodily suffering brings.

And then it just goes blank- fade to black.

Nothing else exists- not matter which is just a form of energy in a matrix of probability.

I see Dadu, his big, white beard swaying in the dark; a fire seems to burn in front of him, I can hear the wood crackle, I can see the fire dance in his eyes. He begins to look like someone not quite like Dadu, but he is him.

Dadu’s face began to morph into the face of Sanyal Mahasaya, his gurudeva. I knew that face only too well; it had been a part of my life as seeing it as the first thing in the morning cemented that face forever in my brain.

Sanyal Mahasaya looked wrathful, fearsome and terrifying. His voice was booing in my head, “Actions or karma can cause bondage, it can also liberate, in the one BEING, the ONE ALL, everything is connected to every other thing. Good and evil are subjective…the Universe is both positive and negative, like the atoms bouncing in your body…it is the whole series of contrasted qualities- NOTHING IS PURE GOOD OR PURE EVIL.”

I saw her face again; the song is playing louder now that the monologue is over, like the sound designer turned it up a notch!

“Now you’ve disappeared somewhere,

Like outer space,

You’ve found some better place

And I miss you…

Like the deserts miss the rain

Could you be dead…

By now the words had begun to scream at me- could you be dead??

It hit me hard- she is dead!!!

I will never hold her again, I will never laugh with her again, never share my life with her again; the same way I can never see Ma or baba or dadu.

It’s over, finito, kaput!!!

I see her again, frothing from the mouth, her body all twisted and blue from the poison, I feel the nausea swimming in my head.

I think about the observer’s paradox, this concept that the observer decides what to observe. What if I am observing all the wrong things??? There are infinite probabilities, so why is this option playing itself out??

Am I in some bizarre twisted way responsible for this? Can I take the blame for this?

I am ready to do pretty much anything at this point to suppress this immense pain; absolutely anything! Muffin where are you?

I’ve got to write, the words are coming, but not as fast as I’d like them to.

I do not know how I began to tell this story. Why did I begin? It is nothingness, a deformity in my subconscious. It is just a pointless pursuit. It began where I don’t know, but right now, I am sitting in front of a Policeman and a State sponsored Psychiatrist.

I know him- Rustom Mistry, yes, that’s his name, I can see the Faravahar glittering in the light. “It’s to remind me of my true purpose, at least that’s what my mom hopes.” He’d told her when she’d asked about it. The winged disk and the bearded human motif looked very appealing to me, but today it seems scary. The purpose of my life, it’s fucking over! Not even the Faravar can save me!

He is asking me all these questions, with a very stern face. But believe me; I cannot understand what he says. For the life of me, his words are a jumble. I am trying to answer, but nothing. My jaw muscles have gone on strike. It’s like I never knew the powers of speech. I am unable to communicate and totally enervated. Have you ever heard a singing bowl? The sound of it keeps reverberating in my mind, suddenly out pops the Tom and Jerry tune in my mind, some heavy programming by Disney!

I have been forced to shut down, just like when you hold the power switch of a computer and just manually shut it down, you do not take the trouble of performing a proper shut down. My consciousness is the black screen, the product of a forced shut down.

My wretched eyes see everything. Rustam’s impassive face. Yet, the trace of anxiety makes itself known, which he suppresses with dutiful vigour. I sense that I’m watching him as different Ninas. Complicated emotions are tormenting me.
Ting tong! The bell rang. I was dressed in this gorgeous little black number from Yves Saint Laurent, also boasted of wedged heels from the same make- black luxurious suede. I was waiting for him.
I opened the door. Dr. Misty stood there. Ah yes, he was complete with the clichéd bunch of roses in his hands-blood red ones. He was speaking as clear as a bell, trying to implore me with his eyes. He also said something to the effect that he had wanted me for very long, but never had the guts to speak up. He told me he thought about me and was becoming obsessive, like I was under his skin. A chance is what he wanted. He throws caution to the winds and hugs me. The next minute I am in his arms, his lips are on mine, trying to get inside my mouth, as if snaking in to touch my soul.
One of the Nina’s (I have many Nina’s inside of me, fuck!) look at his lips, those same one who were trying to part her lips, to explore her very being. Those lips were now moving, creating geometric shapes, like the shapes formed when a kid blows bubbles from that god-awful soapy liquid.
Evanescent worlds,

Like dews of dawn.

Ghosts in time.

So the shapes his mouth is now making also disintegrates like the transient bubbles. Nothing elucidates impermanence as this act of blowing spherical shapes in the air which disintegrate in a few seconds. Poof! They are gone. New worlds created and destroyed, at the blink of an eye-lid. The bubbles form words. He’s asking me why I am here.

Why is anybody here? There is seriousness to his voice as he asks me why I had gone to Lilavati last night? Obviously I did not reply. I could not. I was physically unable to. Trauma I think is what did it. “Can you tell me why you stabbed this man repeatedly?? You killed him…” he was shoving a picture of a smiling face in my hands.
I have on tight mini-skirts and leather boots that are a few inches above my knees, very dark and Gothic make-up and I have on a wig, a short trendy wig. I try to touch it. Someone watching me from afar would notice a shaky hand moving to touch the hairline with no definitive purpose. But the purpose was known to this man- Rustam. “Why do you have that on?” He asks pointing to the wig.
I sit silently, looking down at the blood drying on this super expensive pair of boots that I bought online from some German fantasy leather footwear company, as a gift for my sister. They were splendid in their craftsmanship- the Germans definitely know how to design and make things. Other words from his mouth also manage to surface briefly in my consciousness. Word association! I normally think of a word when I hear a word. One word brings about the memory of another and so on so forth. The story is never ending. This has been a most fascinating way to tend to burgeoning ideas. Words like “life-support system” made its way to my subconscious. A sting of incredible pain jolted me into nausea. I’m throwing up all over the table, my clothes my shoes, my heart rate through the ceiling, my body drenched in sweat.
Rustam signals to the police behind the mirror to send in lady constables. Two stout Marathi female cops burst into the scene with some medical aid. “Kai zala?” They lift me up, try to stuff water down my throat, wipe me up and revive me. But I almost faint, the pain is too oppressive. I would have preferred to be Mary Antoinette, marching to the guillotine.

Muffin, your softness is what I seek; where are you baby? Come to me, there’s nothing I need more than your purrs and rubs.
And then I saw his face.

The face of cobwebs,

Disintegrating like the quarks in an atom,

Of nothingness.
Rustam is looking at me and I think I know what’s going through his head. My beaming face, obviously enamoured by his intellect and sophistication, sitting in the first bench, listening to him talk about Jungian Collective Unconscious, yes that memory is surfacing in his mind. It was a less complicated time. We were infatuated with each other.
But now, everything has changed. Today he stands in front of me as an inquisitor and it’s a witch hunt. A murder! He is supposed to uncover the darkest depths of my mind to know how I could commit such a hideous crime. No sorry- Hideous crimes and now I sit as dead as a doornail.
Dr. Rustam Mistry will be questioned about his diagnosis. He will go with the catatonic stupor characterized by motoric immobility, mutism and catalepsy, followed by the rare bout of nausea, blah fucking bloo.
Frank came to meet me and my mind kept repeating, A hope which is now forever past…A love so sweet it could not last,
Was Time long past…it just broke my already broken heart.

The police officer informed Rustam about his arrival and was asked his professional advice on whether Frank and I could meet. He did consent to our meeting and was there right behind the mirror to observe every subtle emotion that was there or wasn’t there or the ones he just thought existed.
Jail or any form of detention centre is hardly the place for lovers to meet. But Frank just held my hands, kissed them so very tenderly and whispered something about star stuff contemplating the stars…it was a Sagan expression we both loved. Gorgeousity! Star stuff, contemplating star stuff…Malana cream and Sagan. Ah!
When I hear these words I am reminded of another life, in another world where

I remember saying that we are made up of star stuff and he took my chain of thought and elaborated on it. “We’re star stuff, contemplating star stuff…” “As above”, said I and before I could complete my sentence, he covered my mouth and completed, “So below”…for me. We kissed, long and deep, like a Russian Kiss which explored not just my physical body but ignited a fire in my soul, it lasted the whole night. That night was like an eternity!
Frank sobs softly. “I will not give up on you or us…” My heart sobs with him, but I am catatonic. I want to ask him about my cat, Muffin, a majestic British Blue male, two years old and my baby. I want to hold him in my arms, his purring body close to my heart as he nibbles my nose with affection. He is missing me. Two most important males in my life, both from the Great Britain. An irony? The Angrez have not lost their hold on us. Anglophiles formed the part of Bengali society I called my family.

The vilayat, complete with toilet papers to wipe your arse. Who cleans their arse with water? What savages? Don’t forget the knives and forks, eat with your hand and in a jiffy you’re the outcast, chi chi, eating with your hand, as if somehow the toxicity of the hands were confirmed and verified by science.

I’d seen this documentary on Satyajit Ray, where he speaks of how the Western world took to Pather Panchali. He spoke of how some American women had been forced to throw up after watching Indir Thakrun eating with her hands on screen. What a bunch of barbarians, thought the pretty, sophisticated mems.

Okay I might have even fought super hard to be this sexy, sophisticated Angrezi lassie, if so many people around me had not made it their lives’ mission.

They are everywhere, singing Psalms in Convents at the crack of dawn, wearing micro mini, chote chote mini skirts with tank tops, as if showing skin is a sign of emancipation from old oppressive customs; these creatures were allergic to anything that screamed desi, like vampires to sunlight.

Imported goods, imported bathroom fittings, imported brains?
It’s not that I refuse to answer Frank. Believe me, I want to. But my mouth just refuses to speak, my eyes just sank deep into their crevices, my tongue just hangs there like a limp rag; I feel my brain is losing control, like a general who loses his soldiers due to some internal mutiny. The general, my brain has lost power, its reign is over and each of the organs has taken control. But this time, they are not working in harmonious synchronization, they have developed individuality. Screw individuality! Each behaved in the way it wanted to. All they seem to want is to not respond. So there you go, there was no response to Frank’s entreaties. Was this real??? Frank’s face, his tears, Rustam’s face, his stern look- it feels like cardboard scenery, in fact I have the taste of saw dust in my mouth.

I want to thank Frank for caring after my boy Muffin; in a sense he is the be all and end all of my existence when it comes to matters of the heart, and the only male in my life for so long. Thousands of years ago, the Egyptians worshipped the cat in the form of Bastet, killing a cat was punished by death and if a cat died, it’s family would shave off their eyebrows; well, seems like cats have not forgotten that and my Muffin certainly deserves worship.
Anyway Rustam is watching!
Little does he know that a woman is looking to meet me, her name SAPNA VERMA, the wife of the man I had brutally stabbed to death. He had multiple lacerations, a punctured abdomen and his testicles were chopped off. Such gruesome acts were only seen on telly in serials, where you get to see how evidence is collected which ultimately points to the guilty, no matter how much camouflaged the identity of the killer is. My DNA was everywhere in the crime scene, the CSI guys would not break a sweat in proving that it was I who did it.
Anyway Sapna has walked up the Police Officer who’s called Rustam. I have to meet her, she said. Rustam’s apprehensive, but then he sees Frank exit my cell. Sapna follows his glance and instantly approaches Frank demanding to see me, this bloody witch who she would have gladly burnt at the stake.
She enters my cell. Her eyes confront the pale corpse in front, my practically lifeless body. I must say, a shocked expression registers on her face as she looks at me from head to toe. What is this phantasmal entity, she must be thinking. How did this weakling kill my husband? Little did she know that when your mind is set, you can achieve anything- nothing is out of reach? I could have killed him over and over again, a hundred, fuck it, a billion times if I had to. It was like the most important exam I had to take, an exam which would ensure my demotion in the karmic law.

Lines from my poem are swimming in my consciousness; as a writer, one has the ability to randomly switch off and travel to other realms. Yes, it’s officially true, we have super powers.
Dadu would not approve. He was the type of man who would not take a shot at the enemy even if his range was clear and the bullet would definitely find its mark. He was an obsolete man in this world, an outdated DOS operating system. He was more interested in questions like who am I? Where did I come from? He preferred to ponder on such things. Self enquiry, he called it. Dadu I was screaming, who am I? The answer rang loud and clear- a killer. I had killed a man.
Sapna is pale-faced looking at me. “Are you her friend?” She asks Frank hesitantly. Frank nods. I’m not looking at them, but I know exactly what’s happening. At that precise moment I’m observing a spider spin its web. Is it spinning the web to catch a prey? All webs are not spun only for nutritious titbits; some webs are spun as hobbies, as works of art. To create something without any utilitarian purpose, but to create just for the sake of creation! What’s the point of that?? Some common-sense lover would say. Nothing honestly. Right? Wait, I think I see a tiny movement in the web. Is there an insect? Or is it the wind? Or is it my fucking imagination.

Ah! Imagination! It’s what always got me in trouble at school.
I was reprimanded for having too much imagination! My skin crawls to think of the parent’s-teacher’s meetings that Dadu had been subjected to over the years. Sheer torture for both of us and of course for the teachers!

They were just trying to help me through life and look what happened! I went ahead and killed a man. How horrified they would be. I imagine my Algebra teacher, Miss. Kalpana, a hard martinet in her late 50’s on the witness box, telling the judge how she knew I will be in trouble some day. It’s her fault, it’s her imagination.
Imagination is the culprit.

Lines from my poems kept ringing in my ears. STOP!

Back from these lines assaulting my consciousness, poetry is truly my life breath. Only if reality could be poetry, then I might have had a chance to do it differently.
Anyway, by now the shock has transformed into anger. It’s quite amazing to note how humans can translate any emotion into a show of anger. I think it’s a shield they hide behind- ANGER! Anytime you are unsure of how to express yourself, just display anger. It’s safe and effective! You can block off the more painful introspective thought processes.
So Sapna Verma takes the easy way out, she opts for anger. She musters all her strength and strides up to me. After a stare at my impassive, immobile face for a few minutes, she can control herself no longer. The oppressive silence envelopes the room like a thick cloak as all wait with bated breath. Then a slap almost knocks me off balance, but somehow my body refuses to be floored. I have no clue how and why. I just sit there. The sound of the slap is unnerving to Frank and Rustam behind the supposed glass, watching everything. But I feel nothing. Then funnily enough I hear the chorus, “I feel numb,” yes U2, and I understood what numb means.
You go through life, learning new words, understanding their meanings, but actually you understand nothing. The words are nothing but words unless you have the pertinent experience stored away in the depths of your being, which leave permanent imprints on your brain and yes, then you understand the word. Not till then.

Rape, murder, death- all these are words which are very much a part of our regular vocabulary. But how far do we understand them? We honestly don’t. Ask the young college student what rape means; presuming she has never been violated, she will have only a vague understanding of the term, maybe from movies or books.

Mine was from Monika Belluci’s incredible performance in Irreversible. But ask a rape victim what that word means and you will be shocked at the difference of understanding. The same word, but completely different levels of comprehension! Experience is what makes us learn new words, not just simply by glancing at a Thesaurus, but by learning through life. I understand the words Death, rape and murder, they have closely associated themselves with me, like the hanger-on friend you simply want to avoid.
Sapna is breaking down, her anger dissipating as quickly as it had arrived. She comes really close to me; I can smell her Chanel 5 perfume and minty breath. “Why did you kill him?” She asks. Very predictable question! You already knew that was coming right? But get this; she then murmurs something totally unexpected. After a moment’s hesitation, she whispers, “I’m sorry…I know what happened…with your sister…” now this should have definitely instigated some reaction from me, she thinks. It did, in the subconscious. But consciously I’m fucked up, incapable of any expression. I sat like a chopped up tree log, destroyed and cut down. If you apply the crescograph on a chopped up log, it’ll be interesting to see what level of consciousness remains.
I felt like writing but my physical body was pretty much worthless.

Poetry will not erase this woman’s troubles and nor will it answer her questions. Will it? Is poetry even useful? Or is it as worthless as me?

Sapna is troubled about an image that plagued her mind. Her thoughts travel to a certain day when she had looked through a crack on the door panelling. She’d seen her husband on the floor, howling with immense pain. A newspaper lay crumpled by his side, which displayed a beautiful girl. But creases had formed on her face as the newspaper sat wrinkled, but the smile was infectious.

It’s bewildering for her to see the physical similarly between the haggard girl in front and the face in the newspaper, but there was a slight difference. Not to mention that the girl in the newspaper was smiling, brimming with life and this girl in front was as lifeless as a cadaver. Still that was not it. There’s something else and I might have been able to help her, if not for the mutiny of my organs. Ridiculous!
I think the stark imagery of her husband’s painful explosion that night is a bit too much for Sapna to handle. Her head begins to swim and she’s about to collapse. But Frank provides support, the rock solid man that he is. Sapna is thankful for this support and the warmth his huge frame provides that she just holds onto him, his aftershave wafting in the air, tinkling her nose. For a moment she forgets where she is, holding onto him seemed the most natural thing. And then the tears came, they breake the floodgates and storm in like huge tsunamis. Sapna’s outcry sounds like a hurt animal and then she says these words. “But why kill him??? You can’t take what you can’t give…only God can take a life…”
Naive humanity! Who is this anthropomorphized God? What kind of a God will intervene- he will create and then destroy! This idea never agreed with me, in fact it nauseated me, every time people spoke about God like “He” was their personal problem solver. Of course I indulged in that odd prayer or two before my results; they were like placebo. And remember God has to always be referred to as HE!
Dadu used to say that Bengalis are a matri-bhakta culture; to them the mother figure is as important as the father, if not more. God to me could not be a He or a She. This was crystal clear in my mind even as a child. I gave it a lot of thought, but nothing made sense.

Gradually I began to avoid the word God. God in the sense society spoke of the idea. Man cheapened this transcendental concept. It is beyond human understanding. With our dwarfed intellects we can never grasp this idea; it’s a waste to try. “Nothing in life is a waste,” another one of Dadu’s lines! Dadu, Dadu where are you? How come our times together ended? You would say, “Nothing ever ends and similarly nothing begins, it’s just your perception which keeps you chained to such ideas of beginnings and ends. You are eternity in yourself…”. I would do anything to lie in Dadu’s lap or cuddle Muffin.

These words they play with my consciousness, Dadu enunciates them so well, so crisp, and so effortless, it sounds divine. He said that Sanskrit was the language of the Gods and there was never a doubt in my mind when he spoke it. He made the language godly.

He spent much time explaining this shloka to me- from Unreal take me to the Real, from darkness take me to light, from death take me to immortality!

Everything about this situation my friend is unreal. No you do not understand, a murder, by my hands? It is unreal. I respect life; harming even a fly hurts me. It’s no charlatanism! I do not care if you don’t believe me, it’s not important, not trying to get you to come to my side, I’m just telling you of how things are, no embellishments, no B.S.

It was basenter dupur bela, a spring afternoon; we sat near Dadu, in our living room. It was a Sunday, a lazy Sunday. Dadu had a ritual with us; he’d read to us, from the Vedas, from the Tantra texts, the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita and explained certain parts. Zeenia was less open to this idea as she grew older; she preferred to be on her phone or laptop.

Dadu did not scold her, forcing his opinions on people was not what he sought to do when he read to us from these ancient texts; he wanted us to be connected to our roots, discover what our ancestors had left behind.

I enjoyed his company immensely, his stories interested me on many levels and he brought out the different characters so vividly; this led me to form a fascination for the human psyche. Come to think of it, it shaped my future; I decided to take up psychology honours. My parents has both studied English in college; when I was a kid, I knew that I would probably end up studying it too, but eventually studying the human mind became an obsession.

Anyway, that afternoon it was the Bhagavadgita.

The lines ring loudly in my ears, but in it the concept of Arjuna having to kill all his relatives is what bothered me. But dadu, how can Arjuna kill all these people? Especially Bhishm, his gurudeva, and all his cousins? The thing that plays in my mind today is a question little Nina asked him, Dadu but how can anyone kill?

This question, it’s mocking me, this question’s alluring me, and it begins to take many forms, grotesque, grave, gruesome, until it begins to drive me crazy. All this angst in my mind, but if you look at me from afar, I’m carved in stone, an effigy created to be burned.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness…Friedrich Nietzsche

Who can refute the fact that there is both madness and reason in love? And no one echoes this sentiment that a Libra Full Moon which is all about BALANCE! Welcome to the party lovely people, things just got slightly easier with Libra, the crowd pleaser and the emphasis is on RELATIONSHIPS!

This is a super social Full Moon, so expect to hang out with friends and random people. Yes the whole Jupiter RX in Libra has a lot to do with finding foreign people and things interesting.

April’s Full Moon, the Full Pink April’s Full Moon, the Full Pink Moon, heralds the appearance of the moss pink, or wild ground phlox—one of the first spring flowers. It is also known as the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and the Fish Moon…THE FARMER’S ALMANAC

So what are you ready to experience under this Pink Moon. I can tell you, it will be intense, in a sort of balanced way. Yes there will be an urgency, yes there will be an inner hunger to connect and make love, but this energy is Libran, therefore pretty balanced. An interesting observation I made. Every time I see a pink aura on someone, that person is usually hankering for a love interest. It may even mean that relationships are central to her world, romantic ones and pink aura is quite common.

During this spectacular Pink Moon, two planets will be going retrograde. Venus RX in Pisces and Mercury RX in Taurus. See how Venusian the whole experience will be! Both Libra and Taurus are ruled by Venus. And she is raising emotional Tsunamis in Pisces.

How can you deal with turbulent emotions? I would suggest- do something for the planet…do something for Earth. You ask, how can I do that? Well, go Vegan for starters. You would have done a lot. Feed people. Feed children. Help refugees. Help the differently abled. Volunteer to teach. Trust me, once you have initiated this action, you will feel much better. No matter what tragedy has befallen you.

You are not your tragedy. You are sentient life, entangled with all of creation. Breathing, pulsating, throbbing, vibrating like one gigantic organism. This Full Moon energy can make you feel like you are in a RELATIONSHIP with the Earth. In fact, make it a relationship with reality. Everything in it. Can you imagine that? Huns that is the truth. We are all interconnected, we are all part of the WHOLE.

We are dealing with Venusian energy on steroids. So love and finances are the main components, but think of the wide array of shit that falls in these brackets. Love and Money! Sex is intertwined with both these and so are all aspects sensual. Even Art is all about love and passion, developing an idea, getting funds to execute it and then making money. Tada. It is like the snake eating its own tail. Money and love- the most volatile combination!

Venus to me is how we process and experience pleasure and leisure- two vital aspects of human evolution. Without these we would not have gotten very far. Sentiments, values and things we hold dear are all Venus’ influence. Also we realise greater truths through art and culture.

Just be mindful that COMMUNICATION can be very challenging during this Merc retro. I have already begun to feel it. I had this great talk over the phone with a potential funder and then when I met him face to face, it fell flat. The whole scenery felt so plastic. As if all things Venusian have been drained from it.

Venus rules attraction. How sexy you appear and how you get attracted. With a favourable Venus placement in your natal chart, you may be very desirable to the opposite sex and you will also be attracted to people and things. A magnetic pull will be felt with beauty.

She is RX in Pisces. Please read my two articles detailing this transit.

With this retrograde and where it is places in our charts we will have to deal with financial obligations and relationships. With Saturn going retrograde on the 6th of April, this could point to legal cases that might drain your finances. Just be aware of this.

The Moon and Jupiter will be conjunct during this Full Moon. This could signify emotional outbursts, tantrums, drama and other public displays of emotions. Tap into higher thought frequency this day as remember that when Jupiter touches those thoughts they WILL BE EXPANDED. Just make a conscious effort to think of things with self love.

I will not say- BE POSITIVE. Because being fake positive takes away from living. Really living means we should embrace dualistic feelings and that leads to a healthy, well balanced psyche. Just like a developed Libra has. So get that sage, get that gratitude journal and begin the seemingly insurmountable task of cleansing all those troubled emotions.

Think of the film- The Vow. An accident, during their honeymoon. Paige has a serious head injury and is in a coma. She wakes up but does not recognise him and now begins his journey of reconnecting and he wins her back in the end. Very inspiring. Very Libran, putting her before him…all her needs, because he felt he had let her down. He did more than enough to make it up.

I wish we all could do that…put somebody else’s needs before our own. But we can’t. We’re too selfish, caught in our own mundane realities. It is just us, us, us. These energies coming from from the cosmos is asking us otherwise. Imploring us to consider that there are other sides to the story.

Look I began April in a rather chaotic manner. I had so much hope and then I faced some disappointments. I had to restructure my work ideas and improvise constantly, so I’m guessing it might have been complicated for you as well. Do you feel like you’re being pulled in multiple directions? I felt so, till I reminded myself that April will be a month of constant flux. Four planets are changing signs! Saturn, Mercury, Venus, Pluto and they are in shadow periods, about to go retro or coming out of shadow zones.

Therefore nothing will feel solid. Again the ground has been pulled from under our feet and it might feel like drowning. I suggest stop struggling. Firstly calm your breath and still your mind. Then learn to flow. Flow with the momentum of the Universe. It is guiding you. Don’t be afraid to rework that proposal as many times as is needed. Hard work and determination will be rewarded. But keep that burning desire in check. Remember Buddha’s wise words- Desire is the root of all evil. Your rewards may take time…in matters of love and money.

The Mars/Pluto trine will give you focus to continue on your path even though the retro energy may make you feel like giving up. Please ask for help if you want to abandon someone or some project. You might regret it. Use SWITCHWORDS~~REACH-GUIDE-POINT if you are caught making a difficult decision. It will guide you. If you have trouble sleeping write 94 on your left wrist.

There is also a square in play- Saturn in Sag squares Venus conjunct Chiron in Pisces. Healing energies are available to do inner work. No matter how raw your bleeding heart feels, let the blue healing light numb the pain. Let the blue light from Sangye Menla’s(Medicine Buddha’s) heart cool that suffering. Let it all go. Saturn, Venus and Chiron are asking us to look for deeper meaning.

What is meaning you ask? Without going into the Semantics and Foundational theory of meaning, I will tell you one thing simply. Nothing has any meaning, you give it meaning. Like the Observer’s paradox. The wave becomes a particle, a fixed point in space and time because you observe it.

I recently read about this study that curiosity actually leads us to have more meaning in life. So does compassion, empathy. The possibilities are endless. We can do anything with this. It is up to us to find meaning. We need to dive into the seas of samsara and bring out our very own pearl.

This Pink Moon as the Iroquois people named it is about tenderness, birth and new beginnings. When my baby was born, she was pale pink and each time I have assisted in animal birth, I have seen that irrespective of species all babies are born pink! Incredible! But so are the baby buds on trees- they are pink and then with photosynthesis and the release of chlorophyll they turn green.

I am going to give you a very special meditation module- called the Pink Meditation or the Yoni Meditation. The vagina is pink and the tongue that pleasures it is also pink. The Japanese associate the pink Cherry Blossom with a vagina.

Create your scared space. Visualise a pink vagina. You might be closed eyed or you could use a rose quartz crystal to symbolise it. If you can worship the real thing, then nothing like it, but, but, but…the essential prerequisite will be to DELETE all preconceived concepts like shame, guilt from your mind. There is nothing shameful about the Yoni. She is sacred. You are worshipping SHAKTI in her rawest form.

Sage the image or the crystal. You can even mentally “sage”. The intention is to purify the energy and to bring forth positive vibrations. You can use touch or mental touch to connect with the vagina. If you are going to touch it, then make sure you have spend a good amount of time just GAZING at it and admiring it. Offer the Yoni pink items this Pink Full Moon. You can offer pink Champagne, candy, sweets, incense, flowers and other items to her…the Vagina!

Then visit different parts of it, loving it, worshipping it. All the while sending love to the cosmic yoni or mother-matrix, the portal to life. The Sacred Tao gives the Vagina many monikers- “the golden lotus”, “the gates of paradise” and “precious pearl” and “sacred treasure”. You can think of special names too.

Feel no lust. Remember that lust is negative vibration. You will feel attraction but bring that sentiment to adoration. Like you are worshipping the vagina of a Goddess. Then pay homage to each part of the vagina, the clitoris, the vulva, etc. Just surrender to the Cosmic Vagina through a symbol or a human form or a mental form. Don’t forget to contemplate SHAKTI or the SACRED FEMININE. Thought forms are just as powerful and conclude by breathing deeply and chanting AUM. The Yoni Puja as described in Tantric texts is highly intricate and esoteric. But adapt this ancient act and breathe modernity into it. Adapt it and benefit from this wisdom.

Love has the same relationship to the soul as breathing has to the body – Osho

“Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them,” Albert Camus

Oh my Camus! There was a time in my life when my trinity comprised of Kafka, Camus, Sartre! But isn’t this something we would expect Camus to say. Rejoice in the ABSURDISM of life. So Camus says myths don’t really exist! But we create them and breathe life into them. This is so very much the theme I am going to be discussing. Breathing your brand of meaning into something that may or may not be seemingly meaningful…you are not being caught in this binary though, merely entertained by it. Meaning or suicide- both irrelevant! Read on…

Humans…always caught up in the frenzy of trying to find meaning. Never JUST BEING! Just doing- very apt Nike! We can just do, but hardly just be. And now more than fucking ever- we need to JUST BE!

April- a month where some very important astro players will go retrograde or will be in shadow periods. But I will be discussing Venus RX returning to have a drink with Pisces! Fuck no! Not again! Everything we have been trying to raise up from the ground and create structure will likely dissipate! WTF! We just spend all that time making that sand castle!

Hello! Sandcastles are temporary! They will crumble. The sands of time shall shift and this is our lesson my beloveds. This is our lesson. Are you going to breathe life into the myths we have created internally or externally? Are we going to birth this internal dialogue into manifestation? Camus says we should, no we must.

No matter what critics will say, they can never take away from Camus his HUGE HEART and Venus rules the heart chakra and if you notice when people operate from this place, the world often condemns them as ABSURD. Kind of like Venus retro in Pisces. ABSURD and dualistic. How we bear unhappiness because we know happiness is about to come and how life can be so bloody meaningful and entirely pointless the very next moment?

I think this feeling of abject hopelessness in the face of duality can only be overcome by the idea that we fucking stop trying to create meaning all the time. That is our first downfall. Why are we so hellbent on trying to perceive meaning? Let it lie says Venus RX in Pisces as she ingresses back to Pisces where she had just been a few moths ago and she will be there till 29th April!

Camus says the alternate to finding meaning is committing suicide! Philosophical suicide! What else is there to live for? You might be dead anyways if you don’t philosophise! There is no meaning in life or in death- as Camus would have us know, but there is only ENTERTAINING death and life and never becoming slave to one or the other! What a profound thought! Echoing esoteric philosophy! JUST BE! Entertain as in stay in play- lila. Play with the Universe!!! But always maintain a sense of detachment. So Buddha-like!

Why am I harping about Camus? Past lovers are going to create havoc with our senses…Venus RX…HELLO? Yes Camus mystified me with that iconic image of his. That cigar in his mouth. So sexy and French(Algerian??!!) Enough with that, I will probably curl up with The Rebel as I sip my chamomile in bed. Motivation for rebellion and revolution! Been my motto, so to speak. What does Beelzebub stand for? Fucking REBELLION!

Venus is in charge of your GUT as well. They are now saying that the gut is your second brain and is obviously connected to your heart as well. Remember to keep taking those probiotics. Healthy gut bacteria can make a human function optimally. Make sure you don’t have Leaky Gut Syndrome or its onset. In fact, leaky gut has been linked to celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis (MS), autism, cancer… and the list goes on. The connection between leaky gut and chronic illness makes sense because a) approximately 70% of your immune system cells are found in your gut, and b) the chronic inflammation caused by leaky gut is what can lead to inflammatory disease.

“All Disease Begins In The Gut” -Hippocrates

Stay away from GMO Soy, corn, refined vegetable oils(which we use in abundance in India), white refined sugar and processed food. Avoid dairy. Look at going Vegan even if for a week to see how you feel. Eat cabbage, lentils, green beans and quinoa. Soaked and sprouted nuts such as almonds and walnuts are also good sources of L-glutamine which is the remedy for this disease. Yoga can be a lifesaver as it gives the internal organs a massage. Consult a doctor for supplements and practise UTTANASANA or the STANDING FORWARD BEND pose. Use Amber, Citrine or Blue Lace Agate to heal your abdominal issues. You can email me for details on this.

Venus is dissolving all sorts of concepts of love we held, images of ex lovers we still carry in our hearts, she is screaming for us to let go once and for all…all those hidden wounds of the heart. Invoke Venus to heal you with forgiveness issues. Forgive ex lovers, and family members, especially if you’ve had any financial problems with them.

However, there is a softness to this energy that I have been feeling. It has made me so emotional. There is so much happening in my life and so much not happening that I want should happen. This happening and not happening was driving me to a frenzy.

I had to calm down and take the evening off, even though I had bookings. Overwhelming and deep are these emotions that are arising in my heart. Just recently one of my exes got in touch with me. I had broken it off with him when I was sixteen. So that was ages ago and there was nothing to it. But this time when he came back to my life, I realised how DISCONNECTED we are. How very different are our FREQUENCIES and paths and they have always been! Like wtf was I thinking? Venus send me a blessing and the whole plot sort of untraveled before my eyes. There was nothing to do, but just BLOCK!

That is what you need to do- BLOCK! If someone is a psychic vampire(lover, friend, financial partner) then just dump them and move on. I know it is not so easy if you are committed through contracts or other formalities, but remember this retrograde cycle of so many biggies going retro will make us PURGE what we need to.

There is a seductive energy to all this whirling Venusian RX energy. Today you can charm anyone if you set your mind to it. Yes even that cute guy at yoga class. Lol! I am not kidding guys…today you can finally ask your dream date out. The chances are high that he or she will say yes. But do it with style, with panache! Don’t suffocate her. Let her independent streak be honoured as Venus would have it that way. All I say is keep your mommy diamond ring still in the safe. No don’t even get her to try it out. Hold still till the planets shake off this sluggish, unsure energy.

If you’re single, then a little self pleasure hurt nobody! So figure out what works for you and make yourself happy. Alternately you can go out and try to find someone. You may be surprised.

If you’re not really lapping up the sexual vibes, then please use this energy to broadcast UNIVERSAL LOVE to the whole plane of existence and beyond. Meditate, plant trees, hug trees, have sex with them(ecosexuality)…do whatever makes you happy!

Some of you are feeling on nerves’ end, jittery, on edge! Yes this astro definitely can make you lapse into sadness. If you suffer from depression, it might act as a catalyst, so it is imperative you continue your soul work.

Keep mindful and definitely keep healthy during these times. In fact, a lot of you will not feel like eating much. Greens, nuts and seeds should work. Do pumpkin seeds. I am chomping some right now and they are delicious. Don’t hanker after illusive dreams regarding finance right now. Be careful and do not go for any major investments. Just ask Venus to feed your intuition, she does it so well.

All said and done, let me tell you that Venus in Pisces can be incredibly healing if you manage to FREE yourself…free yourself from redundant hateful ideas, free yourself from bigotry, free yourself from DIS-ease, free yourself from slavery of any kind…just ask VENUS to set you free. Fly high, like an eagle…soar on the wings of truth!

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion…Albert Camus